


Unplotted Territory

by itsariot



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Eventual Romance, F/M, Gardens & Gardening, Grief/Mourning, New York City, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-14 09:49:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17506325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsariot/pseuds/itsariot
Summary: Ben Solo is tasked with taking over his mother's legacy: her garden plot in a community garden. He returns home to NYC to deal with his grief, and rid himself of the gardening duty. Little does he realize, someone has already been to his mother the person he could never be... (AU - Reylo)





	1. Unseemly Beginnings

A/N - This is a work of complete fiction. I plan to one day use this for a romcom script, but for now, I am feeling inspired by Reylo, so I thought I'd slot them right into this plot. All character names are obviously not mine, and are property of Disney and Lucasfilms as the creators of Star Wars.

 

**Chapter One:**

If you had told Ben Solo that two weeks ago that he would be knee deep in dead petunias trying to remember how to weed, for God’s sake, he thought you’d be joking. Or that maybe he was high as a kite at one of his concerts, hearing another one of Hux’s tragic failed attempts at a threat for taking too long of a solo again. He would never have taken this thought seriously. It was funny how quickly life could change.

One minute you could have a mother you hadn’t talked to in years, and the next minute, she was gone. Like a giant cosmic joke.

 _She was so full of life_ , he thought, shaking his head. _It was never supposed to fucking be this way._

He, Ben, was supposed to be angry for a while. That’s what happens in families after incidents like theirs. Not to mention the time he almost did come back to patch things up, and then his father had to go and die on him. In his arms. That kind of shit affects you. Changes you. It makes you avoid the place you somehow called home as a kid, despite never really feeling at place there. It’s not supposed just simply disappear on you. It should be there when you are ready to come back. It is supposed to be there when you feel whole again and you can face your mother again.

She’s not supposed to die.

That was the worst part about being in this garden again, was being there without her. Leia had loved the flowers, loved the community, loved the fact that it was a resistance story, in the middle of their small little enclave of Manhattan. The garden had developed because the local movie theatre had gone under in the sixties. When it was demolished, Ben’s grandparents had been among the few, the early locals to begin to beautify the sunken, forgotten space with flowers. Other people from the neighborhood quickly joined in and soon, the space became the “Broadway Gardens”. The garden was such a delight to everyone.

As is the way with all things in New York, the first war had been to keep the garden there. In that part, Leia, had been so young--it had been the eighties and she was just out of her teens when she actively fought for the space to remain as a garden. She was able to engage the help of her brother, Luke, a master gardener if there ever was one, and a young architect, Han, to help her cause. Developers were circling like vultures, to take this space and turn it into the boon of all New York travesties: A parking garage.

Leia would never have let that stand. Ben laughed as he remembered her words when retelling the story many a time in his presence: _A fucking parking garage? Any self-respecting New Yorker knows better than to own a car. You’ll get there faster by subway and see some local color. People who want to sit cooped up in a car listening to Wham! to block out the city sounds are not people who deserve to live here_. She was going to save that garden at any cost.

And so she did. She got one of the developers to see reason, claiming that a beautiful garden space would add special value to the garage and the high priced condominiums they had built next door. She harangued Han into constructing a plan for the parking garage that built the garden on top of it, and tasked Luke with devising the landscape of the garden, thus giving everyone the best of both worlds. Han often joked that she had harangued him into loving her, but anyone who saw them together in their later years, even after the divorce, would have told you that he never lost that doe-eyed look he always had when he looked at her. Like a lost puppy, in total amazement of her, a little miffed, but ready to follow her anywhere.

Ben crouched down on one of the stones in the plot to survey the begonias, nestled under the giant peach tree to his left. They looked mostly dead, if not all the way dead. It made sense. It was April. The garden had been closed for four months. Everyone else had cleared there plots and taken care to make sure that it was close to ready for planting come April. Leia had gotten sick in December, so her plot remained as it had been in November at the close of the season. Frozen in time. It almost made him sick to think about how he could see all her best laid plans for the space. He could pick out where she had planned to plant the campanula poscharskyana this year. He also hated that he knew that. Hated that he could easily fall back into caring about this place, caring about his mother, caring about New York. He lived all over now, but mostly in Portland. Being back here messed with his head too much.

He was only back here to clean up the space for the next owner. That was why he had been called by Amilyn Holdo. That was how these plots worked. Either they continued down the line with the family members, or they went on to some new gardener who volunteered at the garden. He just hoped it would go to someone who knew its importance, who had been here a while--not some new, young, hot-shot who would rip out the classic hydrangea in favor of some stupid fucking succulents because they are easier to care for. The only people who need succulents in this life are basic twenty-something hipsters trying to get laid on the basis that they seem so sensitive because they can care for plants once every two weeks.

He glanced up and looked at the peach tree. He had left it for last. His mother and father had planted it together, as the first thing placed in this new garden, on the roof of a parking garage, now thriving in all its glory.

He paused.

Someone had been watering it. For the last two months, from the look of it.

It could have been Holdo, who had trouble with stairs, or maybe fucking Poe Dameron--maybe despite all his grandeur of being a Chair of the Membership Committee now, he would have deigned to come to this lowly spot for 20 minutes a day and hold a hose over it. But Ben doubted that. They both loved Leia, but few people knew the real significance of that peach tree.

It was planted for him--because they knew what no one else knew. They were pregnant and they wanted to celebrate it.

He had kind of figured the peach tree would be in rough shape by now. Kind of like he was.

That was why when he heard the hose start on the other side of the tree, he was shaken out of his reverie. That, and he was beginning to get soaked from the additional spray on a cold April day. His gloves were nearly watered through from being in front of his face.

“Person over here,” Ben called out, all annoyance. “Could you aim another way?”

A slender, short brunette young woman poked her head around the other side of the tree. She looked affronted and said as much.

“What the hell are you doing on Leia Organa’s plot?”


	2. Chapter Two: Rough Around The Edges

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben Solo is tasked with taking over his mother's legacy: her garden plot in a community garden. He returns home to NYC to deal with his grief, and rid himself of the gardening duty. Little does he realize, someone has already been to his mother the person he could never be... (AU - Reylo)

**Chapter Two:**

 

Rey Jacobs had a precise plan for her life. She lived with three roommates, she kind of had to have it down to the minute. That meant four different shower schedules, four sets of hands prepping dinners at once, four people who all had things they wanted to watch that would be markedly less depressing to watch on the one flat screen television they had in the living room than on their cell phones in their rooms.

 

Today the plan had been to meet up with Finn for coffee, after quickly watering the peach tree plot. Which she had been doing for about two months, one week and five days. She was not about to stop now, even though Finn had mentioned that Poe had told him that the someone from the family would be stopping by this week. But no matter. It was one of the only activities that helped keep her feeling sane. So the routine of it stayed, even if Finn was worried about her. She put on a podcast while she turned on the water and dragged out the hose. She thought about putting on a Netflix show or something to entertain her, but that felt like sacrilege at this plot.

 

After coming to New York, she had started to see a therapist, and the therapist was abundantly clear about the fact that watching television and movies on your cell phone was insular and kept you isolated from the rest of the world. That was kind of fine with Rey at the moment. She had felt a little lost since Leia had passed away. 

 

It seemed odd to have such strong feelings toward someone she had known a little over a year. Two garden seasons. She had spotted Leia trying to prune the hydrangeas and then pick the peaches from the tree, so they wouldn’t get eaten. Apparently, the last few summers, the peaches had been infected with some kind of fungal disease that made them inedible. Leia couldn’t reach all the branches, even with the sturdiest of ladders, and the only at the Broadway Gardens wasn’t particularly sturdy. Rey had happened upon Leia during one of her many Sunday visits to the garden. It was the only time she had ever found the garden open--like some mystical, flowery Brigadoon.

 

The garden was like this glimmering gem in the tarnished, forgotten crown of New York. Covered in grime and soot, it was hard to know that the crown was even still there, smashed pieces poking out of the newly laid asphalt and concrete. But on that first Sunday when Rey was simply exploring her own neighborhood, she saw a bright, unassuming little sign to the side of the parking garage, past an open wrought iron gate and up the steps.

 

As soon as she plateaued, she was nearly taken aghast with the beauty her eyes beheld. A series of plots, no bigger in total than a building roof, but the dense overhang of plants, numerous trees, and ivy on the building next door made it feel so expansive. There was a riot of color everywhere she looked--vibrant blues and dashing pinks. She walked past a cherry tree and onto one of the meandering woodchipped paths. She passed a herb garden in one of the plots and bent down to get a fresh smell of the rosemary. It was so fragrant, it tingled the tip of her nose. Once she was back up, she wandered toward the front and was immediately delighted. A lotus pond filled with koi. They bobbled up their heads in a fervor, opening and closing their mouths rhythmically. They must have wanted her to feed them, but she was the wrong human. She didn’t even know where to begin to guess fish food might be.

 

As she tore her eyes away from them, she spotted a nice, shady mulberry tree, with a table and chairs underneath it. Perfect. She had a book in her bag anyway and was now itching to sit and read it. She walked past some hydrangeas and noted their beautiful lilac color. She had always thought hydrangeas were the prettiest flowers--so unpretentious but consistent in their bloom. She’d seen some planted outside her favorite little house in Rochester, which she often visited while she lived at numerous foster homes. It was one of the only constants in her life during that time. Her north star. She might not remember the address of the home that night, but she could always navigate her way to the little hydrangea house.

 

She felt comfort in this little corner of the world she had chosen, under the mulberry tree. She got out her book and leafed through it to find her place. She could just barely hear the traffic up here. What luck in the city was this!

 

She glanced up for a second to see if the sky was visible through the tree branches, and caught sight of the peach tree, in the middle of the whole plot. She hadn’t realized, but all the paths seemed to wind themselves around the garden and back to that tree. All paths led to the peach tree. What an interesting design. 

 

That first day, she had given it a passing thought to take a few peaches off the low hanging branches to bring home to her roommates. She decided at the time that it would be poor form to find the garden of Eden and immediately steal from it. Maybe another time. She was sure as hell glad that she never plucked a peach off the tree to consume it once Leia set her straight.

 

It was a few Sundays after the first that Rey met Leia. As she walked up the steps, she noticed an older woman reaching but struggling a bit to pull the fruit off the branches of the peach tree.

 

With one phrase to Leia of introduction and asking if she needed help, Rey found herself standing on the rickety ladder, begloved, and tasked with plucking peaches off the high branches first.

 

“Seriously, don’t eat the peaches,” Leia reiterated as if Rey was about to pop one into her mouth that instant. “I can’t seem to get them to grow healthy.”

 

“Maybe a few for my roommates then,” Rey joked as she threw the few she had plucked in the waiting basket Leia held.

 

“You have roommates?” She tsked. Rey nodded at her.

 

“Definitely take a few home,” Leia replied, “Then, no roommates. Problem solved.”

 

Rey laughed and continued to pull the peaches. It was a soothing task--something that Rey had a hard time coming by, living with three girls. It was high drama all the time. First, she lived with Rose and Paige Tico, a set of sisters that had moved to New York from San Francisco. They had been homeless teens in the area until Rose and Paige were able to get into a vocational program at which they were highly skilled. Now Paige was at university in New York for mechanical engineering while Rose still worked the trade, and even got herself the position of building go-to plumber. According to Rose, it could be highly gross to see what all the neighbors were up to, but paired with her regular work, it paid really well.

 

The other roommate was Kaydel Connix, a blond-haired yoga-loving Portland native. She brought a fair amount of drama to the apartment with stories of her dating escapades. Rose often joked that they should make a podcast of her stories. They were certainly entertaining, to say the least. Rey’s current favorite was the story of how she had an eighteen-hour date with a guy because it was just going that well--lunch to drinks to dinner to sleeping over at his place and waking up to breakfast in bed while watching  _ The Incredible Jessica James _ **_._ ** Rey had never had a date last past two hours, so she couldn’t even begin to imagine how that conversation to continue the date had even happened.

 

She could barely get herself to swipe right on Bumble on a good day. Working up the courage to write a half-assed message took too much out of her. Setting up a time and a place for a date? Inconceivable! Meeting an actual, full-blooded, non-murderous (hopefully) man? Yeah, that was  nope from Rey.

 

If she was being honest with herself,--and where else could she be more honest than when she was up in a peach tree, plucking fruits off the heavy branches to alleviate the burden of the tree, and death could be imminent if she was to fall off the ladder--she wished she could meet someone the old-fashioned way. The non-digital way. She had once heard a story of a couple that met in the 1930s at the beach. The girl had been lounging around in the sun, and the boy had come by in a hurry, kicking sand onto her towel, and her, as a result. As she looked up at him in annoyance, he sauntered back over and apologized. They hit it off from there and were married for over fifty years. Rey wasn’t asking for much! Just for a little sand to be kicked her way. She would be willing to do the rest.

 

“Rey?” Leia called up, breaking Rey out of those absorbing thoughts and bringing her back to Earth. “I think the tree is looking good. You can head back down.”

 

Rey crept carefully and cat-like down the steps of the ladder. She folded it and grabbed it by the side. Then she looked around blankly. “Where should I put it for you?”

 

“Oh you’re that kind of volunteer!” Leia exclaimed in delight. “Put it over in the shed for me. I’ll unlock it and let you in so you can see where.”

 

Leia got up from her where she had been digging in the dirt on her hands and knees. She put down the shears she had been using a minute earlier to prune the hydrangeas and wiped her hands on her jeans. No fuss. Rey liked it. She looked like a woman of importance, with her hair styled so majestically in complicated knots, but like she would be willing to get down in the dirty thick of things, with all the topsoil stains on her jeans evident when she stood tall. Rey didn’t even know the half of it then.

 

Leia led the small procession to the shed and dropped off her items along the way. When they arrived at the small wooden shed at the back of the garden, she locked it without preamble and ushered Rey inside. The walls were covered with shelving for tools, a large bulletin board full of announcements, community event flyers and newspaper clippings, and a series of large books on plants, plant-care, and local Nursery catalogs. It was its own little world of nooks and crannies.

 

Leia pointed to a location on the end that was clearly the home of the ladder. Rey gently placed it down and then went to look at the bulletin board. The photo that stood out first was one of a much younger Leia, with two young men from a newspaper. The small caption of the photo below stated: “Local activists, Leia Organa, Han Solo, and Luke Skywalker organize to save treasured community garden.”

 

“Is this true?” Rey asked as she pointed at the black and white photo. It almost looked like they were about to receive medals--they were smiling so wide and looked so proud as they stood in front of a clear construction site.

 

“No, all lies,” Leia replied with a twinkle in her eye. “Damn newspapers--can’t ever tell them anything and they’ll still print it.”

 

Rey laughed. “Really?”

 

Leia nodded with her eyebrows raised. “No way in hell would any sane person call Han Solo an ‘activist.’ More like a “forced-to-action” architect. He would have designed this parking structure only in cement if I hadn’t dragged him along for the ride of his life.”

 

“He looks happy enough here,” Rey remarked, smiling at the black and white photo clipping.

 

“He should,” Leia said, looking a bit dreamy-eyed as if she was remembering something some distant happy memory. “He was.”

 

Not wanting to pry, Rey busied herself with cleaning off her hands in the sink to the left. A pinch of soap, water, and scrubbing left her feeling quite like new. Leia was examining the picture above the first closely, as it was a riddle she couldn’t solve. Rey took a peek at the photograph. It was a family and a happy one at that. Han and Leia were gathered in front of the peach tree, and there was a young boy squirming atop Han’s shoulders, trying and reaching, quite in vain, to pluck fruit off the very tree as she just had.

 

“Is that your family?” Rey asked tightly. Family was such a nebulous yet searing topic for her. Certain memories, or lack of them, could come back pointedly and harshly at a moment’s notice and swiftly stab her in the heart. At the same time, she could recall little, if anything at all about her family, but the not having, that was burned on her heart for eternity.

 

“It is,” Leia replied evenly. Her voice betrayed the note of something more, but what that something was, Rey couldn’t place and certainly was not about to ask after. She needed someone like Rose for moments like this. Someone who was not afraid of inquiry for the sake of it. 

 

Rey let the memory of Leia and her first meeting fade for the moment. But it was the first thing that flashed through her mind as she sprayed that water hose unbeknownst toward the one person she knew so much about, but had never met.

 

Now he stood before her, albeit a bit more soaked than before and much older than any photograph she had seen of him.

 

Ben Solo.


End file.
